What do the crime beat and being a mom have in common? Dirty Laundry.

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Here, fishy fishy!

Anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis probably knows how much I love to fish. It’s something my husband Eric and I do together, both in the summer and winter. But this summer has been a bit tough. Eric’s boat motor gave up the ghost in the spring, so he decided to sell his boat.

Eventually we’ll replace it, but in the meantime, I haven’t been out fishing since our Sturgeon Excursion trip toLake of the Woodsin early spring. I forgot to renew my fishing license before the state shut down, and by the time all that foolishness was done I really didn’t have a reason to go get one.

Until Thursday, when I remembered I needed one for our trip to Mille Lacs. That’s right. As you read this, I’m (hopefully) sitting in a boat with some friends on Mille Lacs. Here, fishy fishy! Come to Mommy!

I love the feeling of the little tiny nibble on my line or the hard strike when a fish hits the bait like a hammer. There’s nothing like it. Even when we’re not catching much, it’s always nice to be trying. Eric says fish are just an interesting by-product of the experience.

As the weather has cooled down, Eric and I have been dreaming fondly of a season of ice fishing. In the last week, I’ve invited a co-worker and a judge to join us out in our fish house this winter. We always have a great time, whether we’re actually catching fish or not.

We need to make a few modifications to the house this year, but we should be good to go once the ice starts to form. I’m not a huge fan of winter, but ice fishing makes it easier to bear. I totally neglect house cleaning and other chores all winter so we can get out in the fish house.

When the kids were little, we’d drag the whole crew out onto the ice. The inside of our fish house is covered with drawings the kids made while waiting for fish to bite. The rest of the walls are decorated with notes made by us and our guests. We just use a marker and write on the walls – when we hear something funny, when someone visits the house for the first time, when a particular experience makes us smile. All of it is documented somewhere inside that house. And when the fish aren’t biting, we read the walls and laugh as we remember what was going on at that particular time.

It’s like our own time capsule of memories. In a couple of years, we’ll retire this particular fish house and have to start all over on the walls of a new one Eric is planning to build. Now that all of the kids are out of the house, we want one a little bigger for more comfortable overnight trips. The one we have now has a bed so we can stay overnight, but when Eric built it we were both a bit, um, smaller. He’s planning a new one that will be bigger and a little better organized. We actually discuss the plans quite often. When we aren’t fishing, we’re generally talking about fishing, I guess.

Hopefully I’ll come back from this trip with some nice fillets, but even if we don’t, I know we’ll come back with some fun pictures and great memories. We fish with some fun people, so there will be lots of craziness and laughter.